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Avoid the “be yourself” trap

Some thoughts on the culture obsessed with "being yourself", what negative effects it can have on you and how to overcome those negative though patterns by a subtle change from "what I want to have" to "who I want to be".

I've been interested in self-help and personal achievement for about a decade now, an I enjoy giving advice to those of my friends who want to accomplish something. By trying to help them I often realize my own shortcomings in some areas. This is a story of one the most insidious and prevalent ones.

Coaching someone (including yourself) into doing something will probably get you a lot of resistance if you did not prepare for the process appropriately. You might know that change requires you to have a lot of reasons to beat the status quo and that these should include both the positive (what will I gain by doing X) and negative (what will I lose if I don't do it).

You might also be aware that a new goal will be made a lot easier by destroying the beliefs that you have that are not supporting the new goal and creating some that will.

Now this is where most of the resistance will emerge with two possible scenarios:

• Your friend doesn't have the ability to distinguish between belief and fact. This can be diagnosed by the quizzical look when you ask a question like "What opinions do you have in this area that might be relevant to this goal"?. Obviously - the questions will be based on the goal, but the look should be easy to spot. This situation is quite troublesome and this post is not designed to help you.

• Your friend (or you) is hesitant to destroy the beliefs and install some new ones because "That's just not me".

The second is quite the conundrum and it really pains me to write about it, remembering that I've been trapped in that cage for so many years.

Just be yourself

What does that even mean? It's one of those sayings that can be broken down into a subset of expectations that are placed upon your actions. Those might include:

• Do not think, act or say anything that might be inconsistent with what you already did in the past.

• Do not let anyone influence you in any way (for that would greatly contaminate the "yourselfness").

Even when you ignore the obvious paradox that these rules are actually controlling you and limiting your freedom - they make absolutely no sense. They imply that at one moment, your personality formed totally from scratch, and should never change. If you look back at your life and find this to be true - write a book - I would be fascinated by such a tale. Most of us however can identify with the long process of learning and changing - looking back at all the stupid stuff we did and now now we are all the wiser because of it.

Why are we lying to ourselves?

The answer is so simple I was almost embarrassed when I realized it - I am afraid of change. All the lessons I have learned came at a price of pain - the time taken, the emotional costs... and so on.

The brain is a powerful organ, but it is hard-wired to evade pain. By doing something new we take the risk in order to grow.

This is a hard thing to accept, so we create a belief that at one time the things we want will just come to us, with no effort on our part. This is a lie and deep down we all know it.

The situation in our life is (more often than not) created by who we are and what we believe in. The people that win come into possession of wealth with no effort usually lose all of after 1-3 years. If we want to get somewhere - we have to become the person that would be there.

How to overcome this egocentric mentality

Recognize the fluidity of your being - embrace it. More adequately - come to terms that your beliefs of "being yourself" are an elaborate form of self deception that will cause you nothing but pain if you do not change them.

Embrace change as the powerful force driving all life and realize that stability is an illusion marketed to you by people who want to sell you something, or can benefit from you staying in your comfort zone.
Looking at this from an evolutionary perspective - those who risk survive - those who innovate and create change lift humanity up.

Subtle mindhack to avoid the trap:

Think in terms of who you want to become, not what you want to accomplish or what you want to posses - this subtle change of perspective will accustom you to the idea of changing yourself and not passively waiting for something to come to you.

It also jumps the aforementioned self-image hurdle up front and leaves you with a far superior mindset.

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